|
|
|
|
|
       
|
BACK OF THE BOOK VENKATESHWARA INC. The Temple Of Gold India's richest Hindu temple is more than a wonder of faith. It is equally a lesson in cash and material management and the use of technology. By E. Kumar Sharma I don't know when the lord will be able to repay all his debts," says security officer V.R. Kumar, 49, peering over his plastic reading glasses. He's being facetious. Debts aren't really a concern here. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, his grey safari suit somewhat crumpled, Kumar's brow creases as he reflects on the task at hand: counting the temple's money. Kumar oversees security arrangements at the hundi-collection counting centre of the richest Hindu temple in India, the Lord Venkateswara temple on the Tirumala hills, 2,900 ft above sea level and 21 km uphill from the temple town of Tirupati. And the debt that he is referring to has its origin in a mythological tale which talks of the money due to Kubera, the Hindu God of wealth, who is believed to have given a handsome loan to Tirupati's deity, Lord Venkateswara, for his marriage with the Goddess Padmavathi.
The Lord needs no loans today. Kumar is taking a brief break from keeping a close watch on deputies counting the daily collections-about Rs 50,000-from Tirupati's hundi. Behind a wall of glass panels, the men are uniformly dressed in mandatory white vests and white lungis. Undergarments and shirts are strictly prohibited. They could be used to smuggle out money. The hall is swept by 12 close circuit cameras and Kumar's watchful eye. Behind the scenes at the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) an army of employees and managers blend modern management techniques with technology and traditional fervour to keep the holy operation shipshape. So well organised is Tirupati that it could easily be held up as an example of innovative crowd, finance, and material management. The hundi count requires two daily shifts, a total of around 100 people and four gold accessors, who check if all that glitters is indeed gold. Coins are separated from currencies, gold from all else, before being deposited in a bank. "People put all sorts of things in the hundi," says Kumar. The assortment of items include: a crop sapling, gold and silver ornaments, golden handcuffs, and even a gold Leica camera, which is today being used by the official photographer of the temple. Managing The Lord's Money Outside, there is a mild drizzle and on the wet, stony ground around the sanctum sanctorum groups of men, women and children are queued up. Some hungry devotees are wolfing down bananas. A father raises his little son in the air, to help him touch the feet of a gold-plated deity atop a pillar. Look closely at the crowd, and you will notice a white band around their wrists. The band has a bar-code with a time imprint. With close to 45,000 people visiting the temple every day, the band is the temple's queue-management solution. A computer system calculates the average time taken by a devotee for darshan, depending on the number of visitors. But some still complain of having to wait 24 hours-and then only for a fleeting glance of the deity in the sanctum sanctorum. That's better though than waiting indefinitely like before, sometimes for days, in seemingly endless queues. The time you take to reach the deity depends on your class of darshan: free (the lowest priority obviously), Rs 40, Rs 50 and Rs 60. There are a handful who walk in without waiting, but you must first occupy an address like 1, Race Course Road, Delhi. Apart from tickets for the darshan and donations (to the hundi or otherwise), Tirupati has a variety of revenues, from the sale of prasadam, gold and silver coins, to even from the hair shaved off the heads of the devout. Handling this wealth is a major task. "We have never invested in the volatile stockmarket and always go for fixed deposits with banks, preferably the nationalised ones," says B. Eswaraiah, the chief accounts officer of TTD, who takes pride in the fact that the temple officials were watchful enough to withdraw funds from UTI's us 64 scheme. That is the only risky investment they made, a couple of years ago.
"We do not keep assets idle,'' explains Eswaraiah. ''For instance, the gold is deposited in the commercial banks under the gold deposit scheme so that the temple gets interest on its value," says P. Krishnaiah, the executive officer of TTD. There's no dearth of investment ideas. Devotees across the globe send in their ideas, all of which are considered by the board of trustees appointed by the state government. Tirupati also gets government officers on deputation from the Indian Audit and Accounts Service to help out. The government has a big role to play. Tirupati has a total staff strength of 14,000, including a financial advisor, a chief accounts officer, security and vigilance officers, a chief engineer, even a government conservator of forests, apart from experts in marketing, law and welfare and those who manage the temple's schools and colleges. Given the temple's wealth, isn't the government of Andhra Pradesh tempted to treat it as a cash cow? Many say it is, but Krishnaiah insists the government has never withdrawn funds from the temple. As one local official says, "there is no doubt, there are political considerations of the government in power in the state, but by and large, ardent devotees have been appointed to the board." Hair And Out There Standing near a stall that sells coconuts in the foreground of the temple is V. Damodaran, 31, a videographer from Chennai. Dressed in white shirt and trousers, the white band around his wrist, Damodaran has just got his head tonsured. He's here as a result of a promise he made to the Lord that he would come once he managed to buy his own video camera. Many among the 45,000 odd pilgrims who stream in here shave their heads clean. It is not surprising therefore that 250 tonne of hair is generated and sold every year by Tirupati. It's worth about Rs 20 crore per annum, just one entry in revenues that will touch nearly Rs 500 crore this year (See How The Rupee Comes And Goes).
A prime imperative for the temple is the need to automate and streamline procedures. "All our accounts were computerised nearly three years ago and we have a very efficient internal auditing system with a centralised payment mechanism," says Eshwariah. The temple has already invested in the mechanisation of ladoo-making-some 60,000 ladoos are made each day-and in machines to separate currency coins into various denominations. But by far the most important initiative is in HRD training and management (yes, management terms are routine at Tirupati). In September this year, the temple launched the Sri Venkateswara Employees Training Academy, which offers temple-management courses to all its employees. The subjects include temple history, pilgrim-friendliness, and house keeping. It's only appropriate then that Tirupati embraces concepts from the new economy. The temple is working on online bookings (for accommodation and tickets) and services. One of the latest initiatives is the e-hundi, which the TTD hopes to launch within a month. Log on to the temple's website (www.tirumala.org or www.tirupati.org), click on the hundi icon and you will be instantly taken to a Citibank payment gateway. "This allows the devotee in a remote place to make donations to the temple," says M. Ramesh Reddy, 40, one of Tirupati's it movers. Presently, officials are grappling with the security issues involved and are looking at biometrics-the science of using an eye or a thumb as identification-as an option.
Tirupati has its loss-makers though, the ladoo operation for one. Each ladoo costs the pilgrim Rs 5, but the cost of manufacture is Rs 11. Food overall is a huge logistical operation. The temple consumes 3,000 tonnes of rice each year-that's about a lorry load a day. The biggest item in the budget is ghee used in poojas and food-which take up Rs 17 crore of the Rs 40 crore set aside for provisions. Others: nearly a tonne of cashews every day and 300 kg of dried grapes. All procurement and outsourcing is through open tenders. Little wonder, one of the national newspapers recently had a rather peculiar tender notice from the temple. It called for sealed tenders from agencies or individuals for purchase of foreign coins received by the temple in the hundi. The coins in various denominations relate to various countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Canada, UAE, Australia, US, and Sri Lanka. The Lord's work is never done.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Issue Contents Write to us Subscription Syndication INDIA
TODAY | INDIA
TODAY PLUS | COMPUTERS
TODAY | © Living Media India Ltd |
 |
 |
Nautilus, the concise
Oxford on my desk tells me, is a cephalopod mollusc with a light
external spiral shell and numerous short tentacles around the mouth.
The one I encountered in the gym of the hotel where I was staying in
Mumbai looked as ugly as that sounds. Fact is, Nautilus or
otherwise, I hate multigyms. I just don't like the idea of working
out on a machine that offers to do everything for you. To tell you
the truth, I hate working out on machines except for a few
exercises-like the lat pulldowns for the upper back or tricep pull
downs and leg curls. The very idea of doing bench presses on a
Nautilus can make me cry off a work out. That's one reason why many
otherwise regular exercisers like me tend to skip workouts on
business trips.